❝ WHEN THE WORLD WAS BLOWN TO HEAVEN, MY HEART STILL STAYED WITH YOU. ❞
And in that moment, perhaps, all the stars in the heavens looked upon the earth in envy at the way he was looking at her.
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| ANNE WITH AN E / AN...
[ zero. ] PROLOGUE - K A T H L E E N; SAINT JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK APRIL 14th, 1879
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WHEN I WAKE UP, almost every wall and corner of the narrow bedroom is tinted a faint red due to the setting of the sun behind dusty sheer drapes that fly indoors every night as the wind blows against open windows. There is a clock on the nightstand of the girl nearest the door, which is the farthest bed from my own creaky one in which I lay. The numbers are far too small to read.
It's a breezy early morning in mid-April, every crimson sunrise nothing out of the ordinary for the past few weeks. My half-shut eyes sleepily scan the room; none of the eleven girls in which I share the room with are awake at this lonely hour- as always. I yawn quietly and tiptoe over to the largest window, careful not to wake the others as I did yesterday. I press my head against the cold only window pane not left open, and gaze out over the buildings and onto the distant street of Saint John where all the rich people live. Sometimes I call myself lucky that the building was built on a hill overlooking the rest of the city. I don't feel completed isolated that way.
I am drawn to the horizon, where the red streaks of clouds melt into orange; like a candle flame burning at late evening. There are miles and miles of places in the city I have yet to discover. I am sure New Brunswick is truly beautiful, albeit I've been too busy in the confines of an orphanage to see it all for myself. I sigh.
All my life, I have woken up to the same old window; to the same view of distant hilltops, market streets, and houses belonging to citizens I know I will never meet. For years, I look out at them, and ponder about their lives, wondering what goes on in their homes. What are their stories? What are their favourite songs? How do they like their coffee? It might seem strange, I know, but what does an orphan do after she's read every book in the building cover-to-cover, and twice all around?
Though sunrises may appear similar, today, however, will be different.
I like to think that my father's biggest aspiration was to travel the world, that his lifelong ambition was to see all of the glory of places he only ever imagined from story books and literary masterpieces. I like to think; Hey, my father was a journalist! He was a traveller! He wrote poetry about far-off lands, and became an author living under a pen-name in Alaska! Maybe then it would give him a less harsh reason as to why he put me in Marybelle House at two-years-old.
Although, the reality might have been less glamorous; he probably just didn't want to take care of a baby that killed his wife at birth, during a rainy day at the beginning of April- at a town near here that possesses a name I no longer remember.
I've never known much about my parents- but they weren't at all very wealthy when I was conceived. My father became lucky, though, because he married another woman, but he passed five years ago. The woman re-married her first husband, and together they moved to Prince Edward Island along with their two children.
